Abstract: The adoption of social media services has taken root in the lives of nearly a third of the world’s population, reaching 80% in the US in under 15 years. As with the internet and World Wide Web, we are offered access to a wide variety of information and communication services for “free” in exchange for sharing personal profiles and a window into our behavior. With the trade-off of being subjected to advertising, it seemed a great deal. But what has resulted is the weaponization of our on-line lives for profit or worse. We will examine the ethical responsibilities of the platform operators, advertisers, data brokers, governments, and users in pursuit of an open and safe connected world while maintaining an advertiser-based business model.

Disruptive innovators create new markets. They have also created new challenges to our freedom. Once hailed as an innovation for free speech, social media platforms are now criticized as disruptors of public opinion for their lack of censorship of un-American activities, hate groups, and salacious solicitations. What is the balance between freedom and responsibility that must be brought in this new market.

Biography: Paul Weismantel was born in Brooklyn, New York where he attended Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and New York Institute of Technology for the study of Electrical Engineering. He majored in Business Management in the MBA program at C.W. Post - Long Island University. Paul’s study and work life took him to from New York to Indiana, Florida, Texas, and back to New Jersey.

For over 35 years Paul was engaged in product management in a number of multi-national companies; among them Siemens, NEC and AVAYA in which his portfolio teams have generated revenues as high as $500 Million. Paul has managed growing businesses from launch to scale through technology and market transformations. introduced by digital communications, personal computing, the internet, world wide web, and wireless networks. His leadership roles in providing systems, hardware, software and cloud services in the communication and information sectors has benefited governments and global businesses as well as mid-sized firms, and start-ups.

Upon retiring and moving to Hilton Head in early 2016, Paul became actively involved in the South Carolina Lowcountry SCORE program for mentoring and helping small businesses get off the ground, grow, and achieve their goals. He was named Mentor of the year in 2017. He speaks in various forums on topics including privacy, social media, health care and conspiracy theories.